Tuesday, 29 July 2008

The garden is coming on well , though we're getting a bit of wildlife in the form of frogs, bees and spiders. Fiona insists that the spider webs should be cleared though I point out that the kill the real nasties such as bluebottles and the like. This guy seemed to be quite happy sitting on the water feature!!We've also had lots of bees visiting but they are very reluctant to be photographed or filmed. We may get a picture at some point.

While drinking Cava during the afternoon , we noticed the family at the back had aquired a new yappy , black and white puppy ......they called it Keegan!!!

Sunday, 20 July 2008

No rain this year but not much sun either. That didnt stop the bands or people enjoying themseleves . We started the day in South Shields watching the Excellent Bessie and the Zinc Buckets run through a great rockin' set including Stray Cat Strut , Ubangi Stomp and Jolene, much to the delight of numerous small schildren running around the circular paved area th the front of the stage .Took some video with the new camera but the sound was distorted so I added a Gene Vincent soundtrack!!

Then we went into Tynemouth to the Priory to see various Salsa bands who were perfect for the occasion , not only that but the bar was incredibly efficient despite running out of various ciders towards the end.

The Priory looked great bedecked with weird looking flags and stuff.

Here's the main stage:On leaving the Priory we went past the jazz stage and encountered this rather excellent sounding band:

I'll leave this post with a phone photo of a double rainbow over Tynemouth last night:

Sunday, 6 July 2008

A short one this but verry worrying . Went in to the local Zavvi shop in Newcastle this Saturday just gone and the main floor has been cleared of CDs , bar a couple of cardboard boxes in their so called sale.

In the basement , half the floor is taken up by books and magazines , and staff seem to get less knowledgeable by the visit.

HMV , while not as bad , seem to be pursuing a similar route with DVDs, games and books encroaching on the music bits.

While downloading and the internet can be partially blamed for this with likes of Amazon and itunes , it still is worrying to think that in the foreseeable future you wont be able to buy music in your main shopping street unless the Baghdaddies are busking and hawking copies of their latest release.

Even worse the models that HMV and Zavvi are pursuing may lead towards WH Smiths and Woolworths which are looking more like pound shops every time you go in with their DVD For A Pound and Buy One Get One Free sales.

Thursday, 3 July 2008

Not posted for a month and the house is still short of a carpet but there have been a few developments.

Firstly my old PC started acting very dodgily so I replaced it with a new Vista based PC . That has been a nightmare. Vista is atrocious , but can be made slightly more palatable by applying a few changes as detailed here. This was at the same time as adding a Wi-Fi router this now functions fairly well. I was amazed ot the number of insecured routers in the area which prompted me to buy another piece of technology...

The rather excellent ASUS Eee. It's small enough to go in a handbag , comes in a variety of colours (we went for the pink one) , and WORKS!!! It's great for internet surfing and basic office functions , runs on Linux but you can install XP , contains a web cam and is generally brilliant. Well worth the £220 I paid for it. I got mine onlne from Currys within 3 days.

Then came the replacement of the Home Cinema amp , back to Richer Sounds, so we now have decent sound in the front room and are now considering a new television, folling the new TV Unit and stuff that were eventually delivered by the Cotswold Company!!